When you get quality,safety or enviromental accreditation you will find that your business is no longer at the whim of these costly incidents. There are also many positive benefits:• Facilitate business with new trading partners, locally and internationally • Improve productivity across your organisation• Reduce costs by performing key business processes efficiently• Improved customer satisfaction• Corporate knowledge captured and documented• Minimise business risks

Teams at Work offer consulting services to SMEs to help meet accreditation, and/or training and support for all your quality assurance, safety or environmental management needs.

The cost of business lost through failures in services or products?• Cost of product returns • Cost of replacement product• Extra transport costs• Loss of time following up customer• Potential loss of future business

The cost of inefficient processes?• Staff performing tasks only to find :-• the wrong tooling was used• the wrong material was used• the product was painted the wrong colour• the wrong packaging was used

Certification: The Challenge for Small to Medium BusinessThe cost of a full-time QSE Manager is prohibitive for many SMEs, so the responsibility for Quality Assurance is often delegated to middle managers who, typically, have very little understanding of the relevant standards and who are time poor. Due to these time and resource constraints, many usually professional businesses end up with management systems that are barely functional. A massive effort is often needed prior to each audit just to maintain certification. At this point, many organisations turn to external consultants for assistance.

When managers ask themselves, "where's the value in ISO 9001 / AS4801 or ISO14001?”, they are failing to understand that the true intent of these systems is to build better business processes.